1,720,974 research outputs found
Assess environmental toxicity risks in running waters by exploiting functional morphological markers in Hydra vulgaris Pallas, 1766
No full textOver and beyond the Primate baubellum Surface: A “Jewel Bone” Shielded in Museums
Full text linkComputed Tomography (CT), mostly used in the medical field, has also recently been involved in Cultural Heritage studies, thanks to its efficiency and total non-invasiveness. Due to the large variety of sizes and compositions typical of Cultural Heritage objects, different X-ray sources, detectors, and setups are necessary to meet the different needs of various case studies. Here, we focus on the use of micro-CT to explore the morphology and shape of a small, neglected bone found inside the clitoris of non-human primates (the baubellum), which we obtained by accessing two prestigious primatological collections of the American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY, USA) and the National Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC, USA). Overcoming methodological limits imposed by the absence of homologous landmarks, we combined the use of the non-invasive 3D micro-CT and a recently released landmark-free shape analysis (the alpha-shape technique) to objectively describe and quantify the shape complexity of scanned primate baubella. Micro-CT provided high-resolution results, overcoming constraints linked to museum policy about non-disruptive sampling and preserving samples for future research. Finally, it proved appropriate as post-mortem sampling had no impact on protected wild primate populations
The ultimate database to (re)set the evolutionary history of primate genital bones
Full text linkScientific literature concerning genital bones in primates consists of both ancient works (dating back to the nineteenth century) and more recent revisions/meta-analyses, which, however, are not always so detailed or exhaustive. Based on a thorough analysis, several conflicting data, inaccurate references, and questionable claims have emerged. We generated a binary matrix of genital bone occurrence data, considering only data at the species level, based on (1) a rigorous literature search protocol, (2) raw data (collected exclusively from primary literature), (3) an updated taxonomy (often tracing back to the species taxonomic history) and (4) new occurrence data from scanned genitals of fresh and museum specimens (using micro-computed tomography-micro-CT). Thanks to this methodological approach, we almost doubled available occurrence data so far, avoiding any arbitrary extension of generic data to conspecific species. This practice, in fact, has been recently responsible for an overestimation of the occurrence data, definitively flattening the interspecific variability. We performed the ancestral state reconstruction analysis of genital bone occurrence and results were mapped onto the most updated phylogeny of primates. As for baculum, we definitively demonstrated its simplesiomorphy for the entire order. As for baubellum, we interpreted all scattered absences as losses, actually proposing (for the first time) a simplesiomorphic state for the clitoral bone as well. The occurrence data obtained, while indirectly confirming the baculum/baubellum homology (i.e., for each baubellum a baculum was invariably present), could also directly demonstrate an intra-specific variability affecting ossa genitalia occurrence. With our results, we established a radically improved and updated database about the occurrence of genital bones in primates, available for further comparative analyses
- …
